Madrid Culinary Campus is the new university dedicated to gastronomy in all its fields -cooking, agronomy and management- that was born with the vocation of becoming an international reference and that will have the Sapiens method of Ferran Adrià and Andoni Luiz Aduriz (Mugaritz) as a mentor in innovation, among many other professionals.
Promoted by the Universidad Pontificia de Comillas and Vocento, it was presented this Wednesday in public although it has been taking shape since 2019, and it will start next September with an official degree in Gastronomy and Culinary Innovation for 50 students who “will learn to cook, get to know the production food and to master the rules of entrepreneurship and business management”, stated the rector of the academic institution, Enrique Sanz.
Although there are hospitality schools and other private gastronomic universities, the director of the Madrid Culinary Campus (MACC), Antonio Obregón, has told EFE that the sector demands “more training” and that in this case an “international approach” has been considered to make Madrid a world reference for training in gastronomy”.
The degree in Gastronomy and Culinary Innovation will be the first step in a more ambitious training program with double degrees and seven master’s degrees, as well as an offer to improve the training of active professionals with intensive courses.
Ferran Adrià has underlined the importance of a project that will improve training in a sector of great economic relevance (33% of GDP) and that “it will teach people to think”, because when he was studying “only recipes were reproduced and the word creativity was prohibited in the kitchen, despite the fact that it was the first creative action of the human being”.
He has also highlighted management training, which he has been insisting on for years because “90% of hospitality establishments do not make an annual budget and 50% do not last more than five years, something that not only happens in Spain”.
And he praised the fact that MACC is committed to innovation. “In the last 400 years there have been two culinary revolutions: that of French ‘nouvelle cuisine’ and that of the mid-90s in Spain -of which he was the promoter- so we have the power to talk about creativity and innovation” .
There, Andoni Luis Aduriz will play a crucial role, who is working on the development of a pioneering master’s degree focused on creativity and innovation, will offer master classes and will lead the Aula Mugaritz, an open space for reflection and creativity from the perspective of dissemination of the disruptive thinking.
“We can help people to create, transmit our enthusiasm for learning, create a frame of attitude because creativity is contagious and it is a human capacity”, the Basque chef told EFE, so that culinary training goes beyond Learn the basic techniques.
In addition to Adrià -who will also provide all the gastronomic knowledge compiled in the Bullipedia- and Aduriz, MACC will have “the most outstanding chefs, sommeliers, experts and managers” both nationally and internationally, thanks to the fact that it will take advantage of the synergy with Vocento Gastronomía, organizer of congresses such as Madrid Fusión and San Sebastián Gastrononomika, whose main speakers will pass through these classrooms.
Business training will be carried out by ICADE professors and agronomy by those of the University School of Agrarian Engineering of Valladolid.
With a cost of 10,800 euros per course, this first degree in Gastronomy and Culinary Innovation will be taught in the classrooms of the MOM Culinary Institute while waiting to complete the works of the MACC, in “two or three years”, facilities of 10,000 square meters with space for classrooms and kitchens in the Madrid Nuevo Norte project, which includes space for several universities.
For the director of Vocento Gastronomía, Benjamín Lana, it is “one of the most unique training projects internationally” because it is based “on excellence, open-mindedness, defense of academic freedom and multidisciplinary knowledge”. .
The graduates will not receive bands but numbered jackets, the first of which have been for Adrià, Aduriz and Ricard Camarena, with two Michelin stars and three Repsol suns in the restaurant that bears their name in Valencia.
“We have all the wickers to do something important”, highlighted Adrià.
